'At least,' he said, 'there is a reprieve till this frantic fortnight is over. I envy your exemption from the turmoil.'
'I wish you would exempt yourself from the races,' said Julius. 'The mischief they have done in these villages is incalculable! The very men-servants are solicited to put into sweepstakes, whenever they go into Wil'sbro'; and only this morning Mrs. Hornblower has been to me about her son.'
'I thought he was the great feather in Herbert Bowater's cap.'
'Showing the direction of the wind only too well. Since Herbert has been infected with the general insanity, poor Harry Hornblower has lapsed into his old ways, and is always hanging about the 'Three Pigeons' with some of the swarm of locusts who have come down already to brawl round the training stables. This has come to Truelove's ears, and he has notice of dismissal. At the mother's desire I spoke to Truelove, but he told me that at last year's races the lad had gambled at a great rate, and had only been saved from dishonesty by detection in time. He was so penitent that Truelove gave him another trial, on condition that he kept out of temptation; but now he has gone back to it, Mr. Truelove thinks it the only way of saving him from some fresh act of dishonesty. 'It is all up with them,' he says, 'when once they take that turn.''
'You need not speak as if I were accountable for all the blackguardism.'
'Every man is accountable who lends his name and position to bolster up a field of vice.'
'Come, come, Julius. Remember what men have been on the turf.'
'If those men had withheld their support, fashion would not have led so many to their ruin.'
'Hundreds are present without damage. It is a hearty out-of-doors country amusement, and one of the few general holidays that bring all ranks together.'
'You speak of racing as it has been or might be in some golden age,' said Julius. 'Of course there is no harm in trying one horse's speed against another; but look at the facts and say whether it is right to support an amusement that becomes such an occasion of evil.'
'Because a set of rascals choose to bring their villainies there you would have the sport of the whole neighbourhood given up. 'No cakes and ale' with a vengeance!'
'The cakes and ale that make a brother offend ought to be given up.'
'That sentences all public amusements.'
'Not necessarily. The question is of degree. Other amusements may have evil incidentally connected with them, and may lead to temptation, but it is not their chief excitement. The play or the opera is the prime interest, and often a refined and elevated one, but at races the whole excitement depends upon the horses, and is so fictitious that it needs to be enhanced by this betting system. No better faculty is called into play. Some few men may understand the merits of the horse; many more, and most of the ladies, simply like the meeting in numbers; but there is no higher faculty called out, and in many cases the whole attraction is the gambling, and the fouler wickedness in the background.'
'Which would be ten thousand times worse if all gentlemen stood aloof.'
'What good do these gentlemen do beyond keeping the contest honourable and the betting in which they are concerned? Do not they make themselves decoys to the young men on the border-land who would stay away if the turf were left to the mere vulgar? Why should they not leave it to drop like bull-baiting or cock-fighting?'
'Well done, Julius!' said Raymond. 'You will head a clerical crusade against the turf, but I do not think it just to compare it with those ferocious sports which were demoralizing in themselves; while this is to large numbers simply a harmless holiday and excuse for an outing, not to speak of the benefit to the breed of horses.'
'I do not say that all competitions of speed are necessarily wrong, but I do say that the present way of managing races makes them so mischievous that no one ought to encourage them.'
'I wonder what Backsworth and Wil'sbro' would say to you! It is their great harvest. Lodgings for those three days pay a quarter's rent; and where so many interests are concerned, a custom cannot lightly be dropped.'
'Well,' said Raymond with a sigh, 'it is not pleasure that takes me. I shall look on with impartial eyes, if that is what you wish.'
Poor Raymond! it was plain that he had little liking for anything that autumn. He rode over to Swanslea with Cecil, and when he said it was six miles off, she called it four; what he termed bare, marshy, and dreary, was in her eyes open and free; his swamp was her lake; and she ran about discovering charms and capabilities where he saw nothing but damp and dry rot, and, above all, banishment.
Would she have her will? Clio would have thought her lecture had taken effect, and mayhap, it added something to the general temper of self-assertion, but in fact Cecil had little time to think, so thickly did gaieties and preparations crowd upon her. It was the full glory and importance of the Member's wife, her favourite ideal, but all the time her satisfaction was marred by secret heartache as she saw how wearily and formally her husband dragged through whatever fell to his lot, saw how jaded and depressed he looked, and heard him laugh his company laugh without any heart in it. She thought it all his mother's fault, and meant to make up for everything when she had him to herself.
Julius had his troubles. When Rosamond found that races were what she called his pet aversion, she resisted with all her might. Her home associations were all on fire again. She would not condemn the pleasures she had shared with her parents, by abstinence from them, any more than she would deviate from Lady Rathforlane's nursery management to please Mrs. Poynsett and Susan. A bonnet, which Julius trusted never to see in church, was purchased in the face of his remark that every woman who carried her gay attire to the stand made herself an additional feather on the hook of evil. At first she laughed, and then grew tearfully passionate in protests that nothing should induce her to let her brothers see what their own father did turned into a crime; and if they went without her to take care of them, and fell into mischief, whose fault would that be?
It was vain to hint that Tom was gone back to school, and Terry cared more for the Olympic dust than that of Backsworth. She had persuaded herself that his absence would be high treason to her father, whom she respected far more at a distance than when she had been struggling with his ramshackle, easy-going ways. Even now, she was remonstrating with him about poor Terry's present misery. His last half year had been spent under the head- master, who had cultivated his historical and poetical intelligence, whereas Mr. Driver was nothing but an able crammer; and the moment the lad became interested and diverged from routine, he was choked off because such things would not 'tell.' If the 'coach' had any enthusiasm it was for mathematics, and thitherwards Terry's brain was undeveloped. With misplaced ingenuity, he argued that sums came right by chance and that Euclid was best learnt by heart, for 'the pictures' simply confused him; and when Julius, amazed at finding so clever a boy in the novel position of dunce, tried to find out what he did know of arithmetic, his ignorance and inappreciation were so unfathomable that Julius doubted whether the power or the will was at fault. At any rate he was wretched in the present, and dismal as to the future, and looked on his brother-in-law as in league with the oppressors for trying to rouse his sense of duty.
Remonstrance seemed blunted and ineffective everywhere. When Herbert Bowater tried to reclaim Harry Hornblower into giving up his notorious comrades, he received the dogged reply, 'Why should not a chap take his pleasure as well as you?' With the authority at once of clergyman and squire's son, he said, 'Harry, you forget yourself. I am not going to discuss my occupations with you.'
'You know better,' rudely interrupted the lad. 'Racketing about all over the country, and coming home late at night. You'd best not speak of other folks!'
As a matter of fact, Herbert had never been later than was required by a walk home from a dinner, or a very moderate cricket supper; and his conscience was clear as to the quality of his amusements; but instead of, as hitherto, speaking as youth to youth, he used the language of the minister to the insulting parishioner. 'I am sorry I have disturbed Mrs. Hornblower, but the case is not parallel. Innocent amusement is one thing-it is quite another to run into haunts that have
Harry Hornblower laughed. 'It's no go coming the parson over me, Mr. Bowater! It's well known what black coats are, and how they never cry out so loud upon other folks as when they've had a jolly lark among themselves. No concealment now, we're up to a thing or two, and parsons, and capitalists, and squires will have to look sharp.'
This oration, smacking of 'The Three Pigeons,' was delivered so loud as to bring the mother on the scene. 'O, Harry, Harry, you aren't never speaking like that to Mr. Bowater!'
'When folks jaw me about what's nothing to them I always give them as good as they bring. That's my principle,' said Harry, flinging out of the house, while the curate tried to console the weeping mother, and soon after betook himself to his Rector with no mild comments on the lad's insolence.
